“Because Mrs. Gold-Cloud told the children how tears and black looks on their faces always spoiled the pleasure of somebody else, and how smiles and sweet looks and lots of love in the heart brings happiness. When she said this, the Cloud children dried their tears on their mothers’ cloud handkerchiefs and began to smile, and when Pinkie and Goldie kissed each other, the whole sky brightened up. So everything got sunshiny again, and of course the rain stopped as soon as the tears were dried, so in five minutes the little Earth children were running about again as happy as lambs. And the sight of their happiness made the Cloud children glad they had not been so selfish as to quarrel long.” “They must be nice children,” said Billy thoughtfully. “That story sounds the way my mother tells things.” “When you go back, you can tell the story to her,” said Nimbus. “Thank you for telling me,” said Billy politely. “It is a very nice story and I sha’n’t forget it. I’ll have lots of things to tell when I get back. What are you going to do about the Equator?” “Hello!” The last exclamation was directed at the Meteor, who suddenly appeared through the snow bank and, panting for breath, handed Nimbus a message which Billy read over his shoulder. The message read: “Glad to know you are coming, and thanks for your kind words. Equator is loose. “Respectfully, EQUINE OX.” THE EQUINE OX AND EVENING STAR CHAPTER IV THE EQUINE OX AND THE EVENING STAR “I expected it,” said Nimbus with a sigh. “I might have known the Equine Ox couldn’t hold him.” “I don’t suppose it is any use to go to the Equator now, is it?” asked Billy. “I don’t see how we can go there if we don’t know where it is.” “Well, we know where it was, and there’s where we’ll go,” snapped Nimbus. “I have a little speech to make to the Equine Ox that he ought to hear.” The motorman and the conductor had now got a nice, clean path shoveled through the snow, so they boarded the car and it soon slid off the snow cloud and sped on again. Presently Billy, looking downward, saw that they were coming closer to the Earth all the time. And what a different Earth it was from any he had ever seen outside of a geography! A curving coast-line laced with filmy surf lay below him, and on the hills that rose from it he could see countless palm trees, each with a little tuft at the top like the long blades of blue grass about the edge of the garden at home, well beyond the reach of the lawn mower. “Gracious! We must be near where the Equator was,” he exclaimed. “It looks like a conservatory outdoors down there.” “It’s not,” said Nimbus. “It’s the grandstand. That’s where the procession of the Equine Oxen was to be held.” “Of course it won’t be held now?” timidly suggested Billy.